For people and animals share the same fate—both breathe and both must die. So people have no real advantage over the animals. How meaningless! Both go to the same place—they came from dust and they return to dust. For who can prove that the human spirit goes up and the spirit of animals goes down into the earth? So I saw that there is nothing better for people than to be happy in their work. That is our lot in life. And no one can bring us back to see what happens after we die. (Ecclesiastes 3:19–22)
Read again Solomon’s concluding comments in Ecclesiastes 3:22. I believe we are given here a very godly philosophy to follow regarding disadvantages, unfair treatment, and injustice. I think that God’s counsel, through Solomon, is remarkably on target. I say remarkably, because the man had just finished sprouting heresy!
Leaving 3:21 as a question mark hanging in our heads, Solomon comes back with a solution as his conclusion.
Does he say, “Try to understand your circumstances”? No. Does he say, “Compare your lot with another person’s and see how much better yours is than his”? Hardly. Does he say, “Retaliate, resent, become bitter; you didn’t get a fair shake”? No way. Does he say, “Move to some lonely spot and grind out your twilight years in resentful silence”? Absolutely not.
Then what does he say? Namely this: Reject self-pity. Reject revenge. Reject resentment. Reject retaliation. Find ways to discover advantages to your disadvantages. “I have seen that nothing is better than that man should be happy in his activities, for that is his lot” (3:22 NASB 1995). We usually can do very little to change our lot. We can only change our reaction to our lot. We cannot change our past, for example. I don’t care how brilliant we are, our past stands in concrete. We cannot erase it. But we can learn today to see our past from God’s perspective and use the disadvantages of yesterday in our life—today and forever.
In fact, Solomon’s closing sentence in this chapter states that as a very real possibility. “For who will bring him to see what will occur after him?” I’d like to think he is asking, “Who knows the impact it will have on others?” “Who will bring us to see what will occur after such a positive attitude of response?” (3:22).
You and I constantly bump up against people submerged in self-pity. They are hopelessly lost in the swamp of discontent. All they can tell you is how wrong this was, how someone’s promise was broken, how that man walked away and left “me and the kids,” that guy broke up a partnership and “took me to the cleaners,” and on and on and on.
But Solomon says, in effect, “I suggest to you that there’s nothing better than that you look for an advantage and then dwell on it. Make that your life’s message. Who knows what impact it will have?”
